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Sunday, July 8, 2012

In the midst of a fiery floor debate over contempt
proceedings for Attorney General Eric Holder, House Oversight and
Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) quietly dropped a bombshell letter into the Congressional Record.
The May 24 letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings
(D-Md.), ranking member on the panel, quotes from and describes in
detail a secret wiretap application that has become a point of debate in
the GOP’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking probe.
The wiretap applications are under court seal, and releasing such
information to the public would ordinarily be illegal. But Issa appears
to be protected by the Speech or Debate Clause in the Constitution,
which offers immunity for Congressional speech, especially on a
chamber’s floor.
According to the letter, the wiretap applications contained a
startling amount of detail about the operation, which would have tipped
off anyone who read them closely about what tactics were being used.
Holder and Cummings have both maintained that the wiretap
applications did not contain such details and that the applications were
reviewed narrowly for probable cause, not for whether any investigatory
tactics contained followed Justice Department policy.
The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials in the
department’s criminal division, including Deputy Assistant Attorney
General Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth
Blanco and another official who is now deceased.
In Fast and Furious, agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives allowed assault guns bought by “straw
purchasers” to “walk,” which meant ending surveillance on weapons
suspected to be en route to Mexican drug cartels.
The tactic, which was intended to allow agents to track criminal
networks by finding the guns at crime scenes, was condemned after two
guns that were part of the operation were found at U.S. Border Patrol
agent Brian Terry’s murder scene.
Straw purchasers are individuals who buy guns on behalf of criminals, obscuring who is buying the weapons.
While Issa has since said he has obtained a number of wiretap
applications, the letter only refers to one, from March 15, 2010. The
full application is not included in what Issa entered into the
Congressional Record, and names are obscured in Issa’s letter.
In the application, ATF agents included transcripts from a wiretap
intercept from a previous Drug Enforcement Administration investigation
that demonstrated the suspects were part of a gun-smuggling ring.
“The wiretap affidavit details that agents were well aware that large
sums of money were being used to purchase a large number of firearms,
many of which were flowing across the border,” the letter says.
The application included details such as how many guns specific
suspects had purchased via straw purchasers and how many of those guns
had been recovered in Mexico.
It also described how ATF officials watched guns bought by suspected
straw purchasers but then ended their surveillance without interdicting
the guns.
In at least one instance, the guns were recovered at a police stop at the U.S.-Mexico border the next day.
The application included financial details for four suspected straw
purchasers showing they had purchased $373,000 worth of guns in cash but
reported almost no income for the previous year, the letter says.
“Although ATF was aware of these facts, no one was arrested, and ATF
failed to even approach the straw purchasers. Upon learning these
details through its review of this wiretap affidavit, senior Justice
Department officials had a duty to stop this operation. Further, failure
to do so was a violation of Justice Department policy,” the letter
says.
Holder declined to discuss the contents of the applications at a
House Judiciary Committee hearing June 7 but said the applications were
narrowly reviewed for whether there was probable cause to obtain a
wiretap application.
Thousands of wiretap applications are reviewed each year by the DOJ’s
criminal division. The applications are designed to obtain approval, so
they tend to focus on the most suspicious information available.
A line attorney first creates a summary of the application, which is
then usually reviewed by a deputy to Lanny Breuer, the head of the
division, on his behalf. It is then reviewed and approved or denied by a
judge.
Cummings has sided with the DOJ in the debate over the secret applications, but the full substance of his argument is unknown.
A June 5 letter from Cummings responding to Issa’s May 24 letter said
Issa “omits the critical fact that [redacted].” The entire first
section of the letter’s body is likewise blacked out.

"Sadly, it looks like Mr. Issa is
continuing his string of desperate and unsubstantiated claims, while
hiding key information from the very same documents," a Democratic
committee staffer said. "His actions demonstrate a lack of concern for
the facts, as well as a reckless disregard for our nation’s courts and
federal prosecutors who are trying to bring criminals to justice. We’re
not going to stoop to his level. Obviously, we are going to honor the
court’s seal and the prosecutors’ requests. But if Mr. Issa won’t tell
you what he is hiding from the wiretaps, you should ask him why."